Author: Kate Foy

It’s been a busy busy week for this groundling. And it’s mostly been spent travelling to and from Brisbane for performances, showcases, launches, and other industry-related matters. It’s typical of the frantic pace that accompanies the last couple of months of each year, as we gather to mull over what’s been, plan what’s to come, and draw breath before it starts all over again. It’s also time to watch the intake of canapés; there are only so many a groundling can take.

What’s either front and centre or in the back of everyone’s minds right now is the parlous state of the world’s economy … dangerous times as PM Kevin Rudd would have it.  What does this mean for local business and to the personal budget … to job security even? On the business side, there are anxieties in the wider arts industry about the discretionary dollar in an audience member’s pocket. Where will that be spent? It begs the question, “What kind of works do we turn to in dark times?”

We’re all familiar with the all-singing, all-dancing glad-times Hollywood movies during the depression of the 1930s. Audiences flocked to Busby Berkley‘s broadway movies about being ‘in the money’ with understudies making it to stardom, or straight dramas about the ‘little guy’ winning out over the most severe adversity … think Grapes of Wrath … and we get some notion of the stories that appeal. They don’t have to be thigh-slappers or facile puffery, but a good laugh does help.

On Wednesday night this week, there were palpable waves of audience delight in the Playhouse on Brisbane’s South Bank. Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is being directed by Michael Gow for Queensland Theatre Company. He gives this production a fresh look without ever compromising its particular 19th century Wildean playfulness or the character’s eccentricities.  Of course, Earnest is one of the best-loved plays in the English language; it’s a known commodity, but it’s also a life-affimer. I reckon it will be the scripts, the plays, the movies that can affirm community and solidarity that will win out in what our PM calls the ‘dangerous times’ ahead.

It’s good to come together to think out loud in front of ourselves … as Martin Esslin famously wrote about the purpose of theatre.

I trawled back through the posts to one I wrote at this time last year. This is what I said then:

… Another class of actors enters the industry at their showcase performance and end of three years of intensive training. Their lovely talent shone through despite the grunginess of the venue. As always, I felt as though a bunch of fledglings was leaving the nest, and needed protection. No, let them go and hopefully fly. Along with many other actor-trainers, I hate showcases. They are artificial exercises designed to market a human product; they always make me feel incredibly sad and proud in equal measure.

I wanted it to go so well for them all, dressed up, hopefully clutching their business cards, learning how to pick their way through the minefield of industry schmoozing that’s required to get agents, casting calls, auditions, jobs. It’s a tough business. Many will walk away finding it too hard, too compromising, too … .

Break a leg and never give up!

Last night’s venue, the fabulous Brisbane Powerhouse on the river was far from grungy, and the reception (hosted by the Vice-Chancellor Prof Bill Lovegrove) and given to guests, alumni, staff and graduating students of University of Southern Queensland‘s School of Creative Arts was worthy of most opening night bashes in town. In a step up from former Theatre showcases, the newly-styled ‘Trade Show’ was launched bringing together a new kind of showcase, one to introduce the work of the School, located in the Faculty of Arts on the Toowoomba and Springfield campuses. And so for the first time at a showcase, music, art, media and theatre were all on display. Good luck to them.

Get along if you can tonight and see for yourself, the final day. That beautiful talent is now about to enter the next phase of its development, outside the protected walls of the training institution. Now they simply need to ‘just do it.’

PS. Why do howler-monkey members of the audience insist on drawing attention to themselves during a show. Tsk, tsk chaps. Theatre Etiquette 101.

Well who would have thought? In these days of responsible consumerism … is there any such thing … Queensland Theatre Company partnered up with URS in a first for Australia, setting the stage for the start of a sustainable energy program. Theatre production is an energy resource hog; think lighting for a start. Then there are all the production-related artefacts: costumes, makeup, sets, props … made or imported, the cost of travel for artists, creatives, audiences. Marketing and publicity eat up energy … ink, paper, online resources.

And so the latest production from the state’s flagship company The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde was the first carbon-neutral theatre production in the country. This time round, offsets were purchased by the production sponsor URS as part of their sponsorship support. In time, real sustainability is the goal. Bring on those solar panels with some creative solutions for transport.

Congratulations Queensland Theatre Company and URS.